(6) Dictionaries: complexity and pragmatism

What is the meaning of a word? Any word? Take, for example, the word "research."

In order to find the meaning of a word one needs to explore how the word is used. This is, after all, how dictionaries* come to be created - the authors identify how a word is used in lots and lots of cases ... and then define the it using similar words.

Complexity thinking helps us to understand the process by which words gather their meaning, socially: as people talk and write and live, words are used naturally. Gradually, over time, fresh connotations arise, fresh words emerge to describe fresh experiences and artifacts. Dictionaries constantly need to be updated and new words added. Words, then, are constantly "rubbing shoulders" with other words as they are used, naturally, socially - patterns of use and meaning emerge and are constantly being adjusted or adapted. This process of constant adjustment and adapted fits the conditions for emergence (lots of similar interacting objects, no external control, yet patterns emerge) within self-organising systems. Emergence and self-organisation are notions that help us understand complexity thinking.

This means that, in order to understand the meaning of the word "research" we need to recognise that the meanings we hear around us are not necessarily emerging from the same contexts or settings. The way a school geography teacher uses the word when she asks children to research agriculture in China (do geography teachers still ask things like that?) is very different from the way the word is used within a university where staff have dual roles related to research and teaching. We all have different understandings of terms; our discussions about meanings are part of the emergence of fresh understandings, and fresh definitions of the words.

I use the term "pragmatic thinking" to refer to philosophical thinking (is there any other kind, I wonder, wryly to myself) that calls on American pragmatism. The word "pragmatic" is used differently in common language when we refer to "making a pragmatic decision," meaning that the decision is not ideal, but that allows us to carry on with other urgent matters. (Is that a fair description of common use?). I think of this as short-term pragmatism - long-term pragmatism is much more considered, political, and reflective about the possible consequences of one's actions. (Rorty uses a different pair of words to make a similar distinction.)

"Pragmatic thinking" reminds me that we learn from experience - that knowledge is constructed by observing what happens (a) naturally when we simply watch things and (b) when we intervene or act, or do something (when we act, or explore, or experiment) and notice or watch what happens. Science grows in that way: science tests out its theories (a) by observing the natural world and (b) by obseving and investigating the consequences of its interventions.

Pragmatic thinking reminds me that the ideas that guide what we do (our beliefs and assumptions) have an impact on our actions (what we say and do), and that our actions have an impact on our future and the future of those people and things around us. Our ideas are shaped by the conversations we take part in, and our beliefs are related to the cultures in which we live and that all use of language is, in part, impacting on our beliefs and language, and therefore on the future of the world. Admittedly, the impact of any action is, arguably miniscule - so tiny that it has no impact at all ... but in toto ... the impact of our collective actions can be and is very great - our collective actions could be though of as our cultural context - we live within the pattern of what it is, culturally, okay to do and be. (Incidentally, at catastropic moments the impact of an individual action can be massive, permanent, and far-reaching - and we may not be aware of it.)

Why is this relevant to understandings of the meanings of words like research or inquiry or investigation? Partly it is because understandings of pragmatism remind me of the political implications of making particular selections of words. The word research is loaded in the current climate where PBRF and the need for university academic staff to publish is giving it a particular status, and where I am promoting "practice-based research" as a means whereby teachers are able to both focus on their own practice and generate new knowledge that has social value. Or, in the case of school and ECE teachers what are the likely long-term consequences of referring to this as "practice-based inquiry"?

I guess that, when I am discussing the meaning of terms with friends (as I do with you, Takahe), I am thinking about the future, political consequences of particular uses. At least,that is what I am doing in the case of words that seem to me to have powerful influences on the understandings of people I work with in my teaching and research. Playing with meanings and defending some interpretations is, therefore, a part of a political debate that is part of my thesis as a whole.

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* NSOED (the New Shorter Oxford Dictionary of the English Language) is an important book for me (or rather, it is an important pair of books). I enjoy reading the different ways words have been used in publications. My thesis talks about dictionaries and encyclopedia, and reminds me/us that they are all written by people (people with expertise, admittedly) and that other people may have different understandings, or have had different experiences of how any particular word is used.